Of all of the worst things that could happen, this was the worst possible thing: going on vacation with a civic-minded, duty-driven alicorn. It didn’t matter that she was the Princess of Love, no… she wanted to work, and not vacation. Even now, rather than enjoy herself, Cadance was reading a casefile. She was digesting data. Rather than frolic in the sun with her husband and her daughters like a normal, sane pony, Cadance wanted to keep her nose tucked into some dusty old stack of papers.
Fed up with everything about life, Shining Armor groaned.
Flurry Heart and Skyla, they were frolicking. They knew what to do… they understood. Skyla was running through the sand and surf as fast as her stubby legs would carry her while Flurry—who had something yucky from the tidal pool held aloft in her magic—followed in hot pursuit. Ah, at least the sounds of his daughters playing was soothing and just what he needed to relax.
“Daddy! Help! Help! Help! Save me! Dad! Don’t be a jerk! Get up and make Flurry stop!”
Eh, Skyla was fine. If she had the wind to shout, then she wasn’t running very hard. If she was really in trouble, she’d be too winded to be screaming. Ah yes, everything in good fun. A little exercise was good for Skyla, and Shining Armor remembered fondly the days when he motivated his baby sister, Twilight, into physical fitness by dangling something indescribably gross behind her and threatening to touch her tail with it. Now, Twilight was sporty, athletic, and physically fit.
Flurry Heart was an excellent big sister, one so willing to motivate Skyla to be her best.
Doing his best to ignore the rustle of paper, Shining Armor focused on relaxing and thought that maybe, if it got a little hotter, he might go for a dip. The warm sand made him think of Cadance’s warm body beside him, or better still, pressed tight against him, and for the first time he wondered if there might be a way to distract his wife from her work.
“Daddy, please! It’s so icky!”
It was only yesterday that Flurry was learning to talk, or so it seemed. Where did the time go? Only the day before that, he and Cadance were still dating, sneaking around, and finding some way to fronk one another silly in every conceivable public location—some of which were a real challenge. The very best moment was beneath the wooden stage from where Princess Celestia had raised the sun; Cadance had almost torn his ear off in a desperate attempt to remain quiet because he kept hitting the right spot over and over, without mercy.
It was also the day that Cadance had announced to him that they were getting married.
Waxing nostalgic, Shining Armor rolled over onto his side and could feel the grittiness of the white sand as it worked its way deeper into his pelt. Sand would be everywhere, and later, it would be found all over the royal yacht. The cleaning staff would complain, and no matter what they did, sand would continue to be found for a long time. No doubt, sand from the last trip could still be found hiding, escaping detection somehow, because that is what sand did.
“Shiny, dear, I’m noticing a pattern,” Cadance said, her words accompanied by a rustle of papers.
Here we go, Shining Armor thought to himself. He sighed, knowing that Cadance would continue no matter what he said, and he had himself some fresh motivation to toss himself into the sparkling blue-green water. Cadance was gathering her facts and was about to unleash a doctoral dissertation upon him.
“Ponies from small towns find love early… they usually find a special somepony during their formative foalhood years, and the statistics suggest that this results in marriage—young—more often than not. However”—the pink mare drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs with all of the wind needed for an alicorn to properly deliver the facts—“in the cities, especially the big cities, foals don’t form these special bonds nearly as often. Special someponies are rare. And the data seems to suggest that for many, if they haven’t found a partner to bond with during their formative years, chances are high that they don’t form any lasting relationships at all, but go through a series of failed relationships or remain single.”
This was too intriguing to ignore, and Shining Armor found himself resenting his wife just a little tiny bit for springing this on him. It was the worst sort of bait, the kind he had trouble resisting, and even though he tried to push it out of his mind, he found himself thinking about it. For this… there would be a reckoning… later, once dinner, dancing, and drinks were finished.
“The evidence suggests that something about cities, cities that are major population centers, impairs a pony’s ability to find love and be happy. Also, the rates of divorce are much, much higher than those in the small towns. This worries me, Shining; there seems to be a major crisis and as the Princess of Love, I need to fix this somehow.”
“Cadance,” Shining said to his wife, exasperated, “too much choice is just as bad as too little choice. Ponies in podunk towns have limited selection and choose the best from what they have available. It’s easy to find a special somepony when you attend a one room schoolhouse. Freckles, more freckles, the pretty one, four-eyes, pigtails, the egghead, the gassy filly, and the giggler. That’s it. Small town values keeps them together, through whatever means are necessary. They make things work.”
“Shining Armor!” Cadance held her breath for a moment and then let everything out in a huff. “How cynical!”
“Doesn’t make it any less true. In the big cities, with schools that have thousands of students, you just end up with hundreds of variations of the same fillies I listed, and you suffer from selection fatigue.”
Blinking, Cadance pouted with a duck-lipped expression, and she kept shaking her head, though she seemed to lack a suitable rebuttal. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and for a few seconds, she was on the verge of saying something, but failed. Tossing her head back, she snorted, and when she did say something, it wasn’t anything that her husband expected.
“So, Shining Armor… tell me… which filly did you settle on?”
Without thinking of his rather honest reply, Shining Armor said, “The gassy one.”
“What?” Cadance’s sheaf of papers vanished with a crackling pop. “WHAT!” There was a thunderous crack when her wings snapped out from her sides. “This sand will be your grave, Shining Armor, and a sand castle your tombstone!”
His response was one of conditioned magnificence; Shining Armor was on his hooves in less time than it took to blink and he was already running before his legs were even beneath him. When he bolted, he left behind rooster tails of sand and he ran for his life with an angry pink alicorn in hot pursuit.
Steel drums and twanky mandolins failed to distract Shining Armor, who kept thinking about what his wife had said. He chewed his butter and cucumber sandwich, starving after his long, extended run, and was grateful to be sitting in the shade. When Flurry Heart belched long enough and hard enough to almost knock her glass over, poor Shining Armor missed the opportunity to point out how much little Flurry was like her mother, the gassy filly at school.
“I don’t want cucumber sandwiches—”
“Skyla, don’t whine,” Cadance said to her youngest daughter. “You like cucumbers.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want a sandwich—”
“You’re still whining,” Cadance said, helpfully pointing this fact out.
“I want something cold, like a salad.” Crossing her forelegs over her barrel, Skyla stared down at her uneaten sandwich in contempt.
“Wait for din-din—”
“I don’t want to wait for dinner!” Skyla pushed her plate away with magic, and then refused to even look at her mother. “I am hungry for salad now. My demands will be met, or else. If I can’t be happy, then nopony be will happy.”
“How about a sea cucumber sandwich—”
“Shut up, Flurry!”
Shining Armor, lost in his thoughts, responded in auto-parent mode: “Somepony needs a nap.”
“I do not need a nap! I need a salad!” Eyes narrowing behind her glasses, Skyla did her best to give her father a withering stare, but he was lost in his own headspace.
“If you eat your lunch, you can have ice cream,” Cadance offered with a hopeful expression upon her face. If she was tired from her run, she didn’t show it.
“I don’t want ice cream—”
“I want salad!” Flurry whined, mimicking her little sister. “Blah blah blah, look at me, I’m a booger-licker. Shut up and eat your sandwich, before I do.”
Skyla, left with no other options, pressed her hoof over one nostril, sucked in a deep breath through her mouth, which whistled around the gaps in her teeth, and then before her mother or Flurry could say anything, she emptied the contents of her still-open nostril upon her sandwich. Revelling in the shock that could be seen upon her mother’s and sister’s faces, little Skyla crowed to her sister, Flurry, “Eat it, you fat, farty, ice cream loving freak!”
“Yep”—the word came out in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable—“Daddy’s little booger-blaster is in need of a nap. Flurry, you should know better than to get your sister so worked up… it gets her in such an awful mood.”
“You’re blaming me?” Flurry did her best to look as incredulous as possible, while still absolutely disgusted from what her little sister had done.
“Yep.” Shining Armor nodded while Cadance made the booger-garnished sandwich vanish with a pop of magic. “Come along, Skyla.” Before his daughter could protest, he lifted her in his magic and held her aloft, mindful of the fact that a pendulous ribbon of snot still hung from her petite, adorable little nostril. “A little fun is fine, but you were relentless earlier. This is the evidence of you going too far.”
“Shining, do you want me to look after her?” Cadance asked, worried in a way that only a mother could be.
“No,” he replied, “I think I’ll be taking a nap too. Poor little Skyla could use the quiet time.”
“Have a nice nap, both of you.” Cadance waved goodbye with her wing.
Scowling, her manner reluctant, if not downright recalcitrant, Skyla extended one wing and waved goodbye to her mother with her snotty lip curled back in a snarl.
Humming to himself, Shining Armor turned off the shower faucet and still dripping, emerged from the shower while pushing his daugher in front of him. He was almost certain that they both still had sand, but the shower, cool and refreshing, had done much to help Skyla’s insufferable mood.
“Want to talk about it?” Shining Armor asked while his daughter sat down upon the tile floor with a wet plop.
“What’s there to talk about?” Skyla’s wet mane was plastered to her face and a puddle spread out from the epicenter of where she sat.
“Are we no longer friends?” Shining Armor took no satisfaction in the defeated look upon Skyla’s face when she heard his question and using his magic, he lifted her mane away from her eyes, so that he could have himself a better look. Skyla could be a tough one to read and she took after her grandmare, Twilight Velvet.
“I didn’t want to come on this stupid trip in the first place!”
“Here we go.” Sitting down on the tile floor, Shining Armor bumped into the toilet and let out a grunt when the hard edge pressed against his spine. “Your mother, she couldn’t leave her work at home, and you, you didn’t want to leave home in the first place. Of course not. You don’t like changes in routine.”
“No I don’t.” Snorting once to make her point, little Skyla almost sounded haughty.
“So what’s bothering you?” he asked, and when his daughter made no reply, he took a few guesses. “No schoolwork? Do you miss your instructors? Is not having your bestie, little Quiet Dark around, is that giving you fits?” About mid-sentence, the filly began to sniffle and he felt a twinge of guilt.
For a moment, Shining Armor lamented his lot in life. Vacations, a time that he desperately needed, were so difficult to enjoy. With Cadance being a workaholic and Skyla a homebody that melted down when the routine changed, vacations were a time fraught with peril. He knew the risks, yet still he took them, often with the hopes that he would have a good time.
The first tears were already falling and Shining Armor knew that he would be scrubbing her face again in no time at all. He was the designated face scrubber, because he did it just right, and if Cadance tried to clean Skyla’s face, a total meltdown was sure to follow. Why? Skyla never said, other than she just didn’t like her mother washing her face.
Foals were a mystery.
Casting a simple spell, both he and Skyla became dry and the water pooling on the floor vanished. Skyla was having herself a quiet cry, the sort of too-exhausted-for-good-hollering-cry that she had when she really needed a nap. Reflecting a bit on being a father, this bit of knowledge was something that had taken him some fair amount of time to learn. Flurry cried in a much different way, if she cried at all. Having one foal didn’t necessarily prepare you for the second.
“I’m hungry,” Skyla whispered to her father while her barrel hitched from her soft sobs.
“I am too. My lunch was interrupted by somepony having a fit and thinking only of themselves.”
More tears fell, and Skyla stared down at the floor while she wept. “I’m sorry.”
“No salad,” Shining Armor said, risking a terrible tantrum. “You don’t get to have your way, no matter how sorry I feel for you right now.”
Hunched over in misery, Skyla’s ears fell, she closed her eyes, and after a moment, she plopped over onto her side. “That’s fair.”
“You know, Skyla… you’re always the one I can count on to behave. Mostly. Flurry has been so much trouble lately. But then there are moments like this and I am just baffled at how awful you can be—”
“I don’t like change!” Skyla blurted out while kicking her hind legs about. “I don’t like it at all! I hate it!”
Sighing, Shining Armor found that he couldn’t be upset by the interruption. It felt necessary. Skyla was venting—but in a good way. At least she had come out and said how she felt, which he felt was an improvement. In this moment of emotional distress, he could almost hear Princess Celestia’s patient, calm voice in his ear—A good ruler, though no matter how flexible, does well to abide by routine. Skyla had the routine part down pat, but the flexibility part? Not so much.
Flurry seemed to be the one that rolled with the punches.
“I’m going to clean your face up and when I’m done, we’ll go to the galley, just you and I, and we’ll have carrot-butter and crackers—”
“But that’s a treat, and I’ve been a snot.”
“Yes you have, but I am trying to make you feel better.”
“I can’t spread it, I keep busting the crackers.”
She did. She did keep busting the crackers, and Shining Armor found himself in a hard spot. If she never did it for herself, she would never get better. However, in her current state, any sort of frustration, or even slight provocation, it would be her undoing. Now was not the time to help Skyla with her telekinesis, now was the time to get a meal into her, followed by a nap.
“I’ll fix your crackers and carrot-butter for you,” he offered, still feeling conflicted about his choice. At some point, she would have to learn how to deal with her emotions and her magic better, but today was not that day. “But in return, you can’t whine, cry, or complain about having a nap. You can’t even tell me that you’re not sleepy.”
“Aww—”
“Surely that’s worth some carrot-butter and crackers.”
“You win.”
“We both win, my adorable little Sproglodyte.”
“Daddy… we talked about you calling me that.”
“I agreed to nothing.” Standing up, he went to his daughters side and then Shining Armor helped her to stand up. When she was on her hooves once more, he bent his neck and kissed her on the top of her head, just behind her horn, right on the spot that made her squirm. “Now, come along, my sweet little Sproglodyte, and let us have lunch in the galley.”
Scooping up his sniffling, sweet little Sproglodyte Skyla, Shining Armor tossed his daughter onto his back and left to have lunch, forgetting to wash her face.